The Story of How My Mother Hot-Wired Our Car!

The pain is still unforgettable today. The rest of the details – nevermind how hilarious – until this weekend, at least for me, were pretty much forgotten. Now if you’ve ever had an ingrown toenail so severe it made you hobble over to the doctor for an outpatient foot operation – yes, they actually perform those – you’ll understand and appreciate why. For weeks my big toe on my right foot had been causing excruciating pain, to the point, at its worse, that my mother had to rush me to the doctor to take care of it. I was seventeen at the time.

This is a much better looking toe than my own.

You’re probably wondering what’s so hilarious about that? Well… in fact it wasn’t my big toe that brought tears of laughter to my fact yesterday, but mi jefita of course.

My brother’s lowrider-wannabe-Impala had been stolen a couple of months earlier. That particular day, I guess my own car must not have been working because for some reason we ended up driving his car to the local clininc. Now don’t ask me how he’d managed to get his car back. I haven’t the slightest clue?! When we did get it back, though, it no longer turned on with just a key. Instead we had to crank the engine by connecting two wires under the steering wheel, which as you’ve probably guessed by now was pretty much hot wiring.

Our low rider was a little less on the flashy side.

So on the way to the doctor, I had driven us there, but by the time they got around to sleeping my foot with four or five extra long syringes it was time for my little sister to get out of school. My mother in those days had not gotten her drivers license yet and she really had never driven the Impala by herself, pero pues ya no lo quedo de otra:

Pues yo miraba que le pegaban dos cables y se prendía el carro… pues también se los pegue yo y prendio el carro. (Well, I would see you all would connect the cables and the car would turn on, so I did the same thing and it turned on).

Without a license and with a hot wired car, my mother made the drive back to our house, picked up my sister, and drove all the way back to the clinic. Yo entre tanto was still laying in that medical bed with my big toe getting that ingrown toenail removed. Until yesterday that’s all I remembered.